


fearruining and glorygirded

by anonissue



Category: Women's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/F, Magic-Users, Mythology - Freeform, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-21 18:02:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11362728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonissue/pseuds/anonissue
Summary: It’s easy to blame the Breaking on a single man, but in truth, it was never that simple. It’s the same old story, though, someone wanting too much power at too low a price -- but instead of sighing and relenting and waiting years for the balancing, the world shuddered and steeled itself and said “no.”--Hilary grew up wanting to give her life in service for the Queen, she's hardly going to let a little thing like the end of the known universe get in her way.





	1. Behold, I shew you a mystery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Metal_Chocobo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metal_Chocobo/gifts).



> This is _extremely_ AU. I don't even know how this happened. I ended up building a whole quasi matriarchal high-fantasy universe at the dusk of its' existence, which bares very little resemblance to some the suggestions you laid out; please believe me when I say this just kind of... occurred, entirely out of my control. I then did my best to try to keep to the spirit of your request, and with that said, it's my fervent hope that there's something here for you to enjoy; the whole thing kind of did a swan dive off the edge of reality without my permission.
> 
> Content notes are at the end, most of which total to something around PG-13-rated violence and character death, for certain values of the word death.
> 
> Title from e. e. cummings' "The glory is fallen out of"
> 
> Ty to my main babe as always for the hand-holding and general affirmation that this idea wasn't entirely bullshit.

“They were going to tie me to a stake,” Amanda gets out between breaths, “and light me on _fire_.”

“Technically,” Hilary corrects her, while pointedly ignoring Amanda’s attempts to kick free from where’s she’s bound and slung over the back of Hilary’s horse. “They were going to light the kindling stacked underneath you on fire, and you’d’ve likely choked to death on the smoke before being burned to death --”

“How fucking reassuring --”

“Better than actually being lit on fire,” Hilary comments mildly. “And besides, what you do this time that they took to treating you like a witch?”

“I cursed that jackal Szabados’ sheep flock.” Amanda’s admission comes with a sudden cessation of her struggles, as well as a mild contriteness of tone. “She has viable milk that she’s fleecing people for, and for what? There are starving children --”

“You cursed her flock,” Hilary repeats, nonplussed.

“Yes, I cursed her flock,” Amanda repeats.

“Is that some kind of metaphor, or did I accidentally bounce your head off a rock beating a hasty retreat from the mob that wanted your head on a stick?” 

“It’s not a -- “ Amanda swears under her breath, and then there’s something akin to a pop -- Hilary shakes her head, yawns, clearing the pressure from her ears. And then she almost falls off her horse.

Her newly bright-red colored horse.

Hilary pulls her mare up short, pats it down, finds it no worse for wear, and then swivels in her saddle to look at Amanda hanging crossways just short of the horse’s ass.

“It’ll wear off,” Amanda demures.

-

When Hilary of the Redwoods was young girl, she grew up wanting to be a knight like her mother. She knew she had to be fast and cunning, strong and unwavering, stubborn and steadfast.

She fought harder, ran faster, rode swifter than anyone else in her village. She made sure she understood the value of loyalty. She made sure she knew right from wrong.

But then the magic died and the old kingdom broke into pieces, and the dreams of one young girl no longer mattered.

-

“I see you found her,” the Queen’s Counsel sighs. “And in more or less one piece.”

“That is immensely debatable,” Amanda squawks, as Hilary unloads her onto the floor by the Counsel’s dais not unlike how one might shift a sack of potatoes from the back of a donkey to the pantry of a palace kitchen.

-

“You can perform _actual_ magic?” Hilary asks, not caring how she sounds. “You _performed_ honest-to-God magic, and you didn’t think -- what, that anyone would take it seriously?”

“It wasn’t -- look, I made the sheep’s milk taste like rotten tomatoes, and they might bark like dogs instead of bleat at the moment, but it’s also temporary; it hardly counts as _actual_ magic,” the words tumble out of Amanda’s mouth all at once. “It wasn’t to even last the fortnight. I don’t see what the hell all the fuss is about, honestly. Not like their milk is poisonous right now, just foul-tasting.”

Hilary can only stare at Amanda, at her torn and bedraggled gown, at the filth and mud smeared and caked into her hair, where the skin of her wrists has rubbed raw thanks to the crude twine rope binding them. Amanda, to her credit, is balefully making eye-contact with her erstwhile Queensgard, not letting the pregnant and very pointed silence do much to visibly intimidate her.

“And if we’re going to stop here, will you please cut my bindings and let me ride properly?” Amanda continues after a minute of Hilary’s flabbergasted silence.

“No,” Hilary hisses, responding immediately. “And frankly, I should’ve let them finish the job.”

“You don’t mean that,” Amanda sniffs, face once again bouncing off the horse’s flank as Hilary kicks the steed back into double-time without further comment.

“Keep testing my patience,” Hilary replies archly. “And find out.”

-

“I accept gold, no currency,” Hilary talks over Amanda, as if she really were produce, or some sort of material bounty. “You know my terms by now, however -- double what we agreed upon if you’d like me to keep the girl’s secret.”

“And what secret would that be,” the Counselwoman sighs, brows drawn up in annoyance.

“That she’s exactly what she was accused of being by the village I just dragged her away from,” Hilary says, matter of factly. “A witch.”

“What?” And at that, the Counsel’s voice takes on a very unamused tone.

Amanda, to her credit, stays quiet on the subject matter. Hilary finds it amusing to watch, but tries not to let the amusement translate to her face.

“You heard me,” Hilary says. “She enchanted a farmer’s flock and so obviously at that, they were after her blood. Rightly so, even, by most godly folk’s reckoning if you were to ask around.”

“What you’re suggesting is impossible,” the counsel says, body language dismissive of the claim even as her eye’s stay sharp. “You were even alive, by my guess, for the terrible time when the sky broke and killed what little magic was left in the air and earth and waters below.”

“I’m not suggesting I know how she did it,” Hilary shrugs. “Just that she definitely did do it.”

The accusation hangs suspended in the air, Hilary not backing away from it, the Queen’s Counsel not explicitly denying it, and Amanda’s continued silence condemning her further by the second.

“I’m sorry, Megan,” Amanda manages finally, sounding small and tired and like the child Hilary so often forgets she isn't.

The Queen’s Counsel’s face crumples, if however briefly. “Shit,” she says to herself, not nearly far enough under her breath. And then, louder, directed at Hilary: “We don’t have double the gold.”

Hilary frowns, trying to weigh the truth in the Counsel’s words. Hilary knows she’s expensive, especially in a world bleeding resources without anything in return.

“But,” the Counsel -- Megan, as it turns out, such a plain-sounding name after all this time -- continues. “We have something else that you might want instead.”

-

“The only thing I’ve ever wanted from your court is gold,” Hilary says, making sure to speak slowly and clearly.

It’s Amanda who speaks up, contradicting her. “That’s not true.”

Hilary hates that Amanda presumes to know her like they're both still children, even if she's right.

-

The first time Hilary saves Amanda’s life, they’re both young girls, neither aware of the other’s station -- and there’s climbing involved. Amanda had gotten stuck on the roof of a tower spire, Hilary wound up climbing up to get her, hearing her cries for help from a window below. What lingers now in the memory for Hilary is how blue the girl’s eyes had been, rubbed raw and already red from crying.

“I can’t get down,” Amanda had wailed.

“How’d you get up?” Hilary had asked, contrary even then.

“I don’t remember,” Amanda had sulked, Hilary almost tempted enough to call her out on the lie.

“Here, then,” she’d said instead. “Follow me back down. I’ll show you where it’s safe to place your feet.”

And Amanda had followed her back down, through the window, and to safety.

The thing about the memory is that both women will deny recalling it when asked about it in the context of each other  -- the truth, though, is that they both remember the tower, and the short climb down; although each remember it having happened with a different girl entirely. 

-

Megan says, “We’ll make you an honored Queensgard, the first retained of the Midwest.”

Megan says, “We’ll give you land, and a place in our Counsel.”

Megan says, “And a monthly salary -- a half-pound of coin and stone, with two sacks of grain, and free range to hunt and fish on two-hundred acres.”

Hilary doesn’t ask, _to hunt what animals?_ She doesn’t ask, _to counsel whose rule and to guard what queen?_ She doesn’t even bring up _I make four times that when you send me out to bring her home_.

What she says is: “In return for what?”

Megan closes her eyes, and Amanda draws herself up as best as she can from the floor -- the bindings on her hand falling to the floor as she deftly works the thin pick into the rust-worn hole. “There’s a place, it’s very far north -- and I need you to help me get there safely.”

“What kind of place?” Hilary asks.

“A lake,” Amanda says, and ignores the sound Megan makes -- small and wounded. “A frozen lake that hasn’t thawed.”

Hilary doesn’t trust anything about the offer or the quest, but she remembers what she was told as a girl by a long-dead ghost, looks Amanda in the eye, and says, “OK.”

-

They’re not a day on the road when the nightmares start, formless at first, waking Hilary up every hour. She doesn’t remember much, ever, but the dread gnawing at her insides from the ambiguity and unstated purpose to this trek always feel the most suffocating in the mornings before they go out to ride again.

She’s always particularly cranky, until they’ve ridden for too long for her to be anything but tired, and Amanda, kind and deferential when Hilary least expects her to be, doesn’t ask and doesn’t pry. It shouldn’t make Hilary restless and angry.

It makes Hilary restless and angry.

-

“Is it that I’m magic?”

“What?” Hilary barks.

Amanda rolls her eyes. She’s kept pace several strides behind on her palomino mare and goads the horse into catching up to Hilary’s steed.

“Is it that -- is it, you know,” Amanda wiggles her fingers. “That you’re worried I’m evil or that I’ll hex you, or that you think I’m some kind of liability now --”

“No,” Hilary snorts. “No you’re probably the least evil person I’ve ever met, magic or otherwise, and you’ve been rambunctiously foolhardy since I first remember you at age eight. You being a liability is nothing new.”

Amanda smacks the flank of Hilary’s horse hard enough to have it whinny and hop-step in place. Hilary wants to smile, but -- can’t, quite.

“What, then?” Amanda asks.

Hilary thinks about it, thinks about the dreams of being buried under stones and weeds deep underwater, the dreams where she’s riding across a dead grassland steppe with a skeleton on horseback for a companion, the dreams that assault her with the memories she has of all the ways she’s seen people die -- Amanda’s blue eyes superimposed, Amanda’s tangle of blond hair framing face after bloody face.

“I don’t like it when I know you’re keeping secrets from me,” Hilary says.

“Ah,” Amanda sighs, and has the good grace not to deny it.

-

Once, the world gifted magic to living things -- the magic of procreation to the plants and the animals, the magic of creation to humans with nobility of soul. As it turns out, even the world was ignorant in its youth, and its disappointment took to seeding a bitter resentment deep in its core. It didn’t take much, in the end, for it to close itself off to the things left to occupy its surface.

A little ambition, a few broken promises, and the cyclical imbalance of power between people who didn’t have enough of it and people who were wary of sharing it.

It really didn’t take much at all.

-

“It’s not a secret if you never ask me to explain it to you,” Amanda argues.

“A lie of omission is still a lie,” Hilary replies, mildly.

“Do you want me to explain what we’re doing then?” Amanda asks, sounding exasperated.

“No,” Hilary is almost surprised to hear herself reply. “No not really.”

“OK then,” Amanda says, sounding almost relieved.

-

There are fewer organized towns than there were before the Breaking, with less food, less ways to make cooperation fruitful, less reasons to trust your fellow human, but there are still some.

This isn’t the first one they’ve come across, but at Amanda’s insistence, it’s the first one they’re going to pass through. There’s an old bedsheet that’s been painted with the old symbols for the Church, for sickness, and for all-gender settlement. It’s a combination that makes Hilary incredibly uneasy. They’ve left gas lamps running outside -- gas ironically not something all that scarce anymore these days compared to everything else -- which is unusual, makes it easy to see the village for miles around, marks it as easy prey. Hilary wonders if it’s the quarantine mark that makes them so bold. She wonders if whatever people are left here think that the former reputation of the neutrality of the Church will protect them.

“What if it’s something bad,” Hilary asks as they dismount at the start of the first maintained path. “Like a bleeding fever, or something that eats at the flesh?”

“It won’t matter,” Amanda grins.

Hilary does a double-take at that. “I can’t do anything to protect you from that, and a cloth around the nose and mouth doesn’t always work.”

“I know,” Amanda says, bumping Hilary’s hip with hers as she ties off her horse’s lead. “You won’t need to.” She wiggles her fingers at Hilary and makes a _woo-woo_ noise.

“Really,” Hilary manages as dryly as possible. “Your parlor tricks will keep us safe.”

“I find your lack of faith disturbing,” Amanda says, pouting, before leading the way towards the town’s main square.

-

There’s only one ordained clergywoman left, she calls herself Sister Hensley -- and her unruly brown curls aren’t effectively tamed in the slightest by the abbess’ habit she still wears.

Hilary has never liked the Church, but it’s hard not to like Sister Hensley. She’s washing the body of a dead woman when they find her, and she herself is flush and wet with the signs of fever. Hilary instinctively takes several steps back, knowing sickness -- but Amanda walks right up.

“In the time before, they called it spotted fever. It didn’t used to be something people could give to each other, but the Lord often sees fit to try us fully in the most difficult of times,” she explains to Amanda, who turns over the abbess’ proffered hands so they’re palms up -- and even from a distance, Hilary can see the livid red mottling on Hensley’s skin.

“Who was she?” Amanda asks, pointing at the girl on the table, covered in linen and sage ash.

“Maddie, she -- my sister,” Hensley says, her words breaking at the edges even as her face remains serene.

Hilary wants to leave, to ride far away from this place and its pervasive, obvious march towards death. She’s a breath away from ignoring the deference she owes Amanda and hauling her bodily out of this shell of a church, but before either of the other women can react, Amanda pulls Hensley into a hug, a soft, shocked noise escaping the sick woman’s mouth.

“Are you the only one left?” Amanda mumbles into her shoulder.

“No,” Hensley says, after a second of collecting her wits. “No, there’s about a dozen others, in the chapter house, but aren’t you worried --”

“Not at all,” Amanda cuts her off. “Take me to them, please.”

-

Hilary isn’t brave enough to come with her the first time Amanda uses her abilities to heal or provide food or to clean the water or to make things grow, but Hilary becomes braver with time.

-

Hilary is putting the packs together on the horses in the yard when the sound of someone clearing their throat draws her eye. It’s the Queen’s Counsel, stepping out from the shadowy door to the old kitchen passage that no one uses anymore.

“If she doesn’t tell you before you reach the lake,” the counselwoman -- Megan, Hilary remembers; it’s hard not to see her as just Megan, now that she knows -- says, sounding oddly self-righteous. “I still feel you’re obliged to know. Here --”

She offers Hilary a letter, sealed with the Midwestern wax seal. Hilary takes it, finding the wax tamperproofing almost quaint in its pointlessness.

“You open it, but wait as long as you can for her to tell you,” she cautions.

“Tell me what?” Hilary asks, irritated by the secrecy of it all.

“You’ll know,” Megan assures her. “Believe me, you’ll know.”

-

A mill owner and fish farmer named Noora has Amanada taken for ransom -- a seat on the Council, she said. Noora of the Golden Gopher Mill is known name because she’s rich in a time when being rich is newly obscene, and even the Queen’s Counsel had cautioned Hilary before she’d set out three days ago.

“This one doesn’t seem right,” she’d said, her normally critical and stoic demeanor showing some wear. She doesn’t clarify if she means the woman herself or the woman’s terms, but it’s clearly a warning nevertheless.

The mill owner has been treating Amanda uncharacteristically well, like a prized animal or a small child. Hilary knows, because like with all kidnappings these days, she’s laid low to scout before the rescue; or else more often than not, there are complications. Hilary hates to admit it, but the counselwoman’s caution echos loudly now from where’s she’s hiding up on the wooded hill along the edge of the property, her spy glass outstretched. Amanda’s being kept in shackles, but she’s not being bound seriously. She’s not trussed up like a hog or calf -- and Hilary taught Amanda how to lock-pick effectively years ago, she’s frankly better at it than Hilary is now. There’s no observable reason for her to be staying and complacent unless something else is keeping her there.

Hilary enters the main house after dinner, the fifth night, walks right up to the dining table where the mill owner is finishing her cooked herring. It’s obviously undersized, if Hilary’s memory serves, but a rare prize nonetheless. Noora’s two daughters are clearing the table, and stop to stare at Hilary’s sudden, casual intrusion. Amanda is sitting quietly at the head of the table, like an honored guest save for the iron around her arms and legs.

“Come to pay her ransom, mercenary?” the fisherwoman asks, almost haughty in her lack of concern.

Most people see Hilary and don’t look at her, they look at her armor. It marks her Queensgard; that much hasn’t changed since the Breaking, even if her membership in the organization has expired one way or another. Noora’s assessment of her mercenary status is enough to cause Hilary to dart a questioning look at Amanda.

“This one has no more Queensgard, I know,” Noora says, smiling, cutting into the still steaming flesh on her plate. “Rumor has it the Midwest was too poor to maintain a proper guard. Although looking at you, I’d say you’re expensive enough that you probably haven’t come to pay to bring her back home.”

“She wasn’t yours to take to begin with,” Hilary answers, carefully.

Noora shrugs. “Maybe not, but there’s a very old saying, possession is nine-tenths the law. If it’s your payday you’re concerned about, I’ll pay you twice the gold to be on your way. Twice the gold, and a nice meal -- something in short supply given that you’ve been hiding in the woods up on my hill for the last week.”

“Don’t eat the food,” Amanda blurts.

“I wasn’t going to,” Hilary says, not taking her eyes off Noora, who hasn’t stopped eating, unperturbed by Amanda’s declaration. “Did she poison you?”

“Not -- not in the sense you mean,” Amanda stutters out.

“Good,” Hilary replies, and steps in and kicks Noora viciously in the side of her head as hard and as swiftly as she’s capable.

Noora falls to the floor stunned, her two girls screaming.

-

Somewhere along the way, Hilary stops wanting to live a life in service to an abstraction, and starts living it in service to the only person she has left in the world.

-

“We can review your lock-picking techniques on the way home, I’m too tired to yell at you properly for making me work right now,” Hilary answers casually hoisting Amanda into a fireman’s carry, moving so swiftly she almost walks out the door before reacting to Amanda’s half-shouted --

“ _Wait_ \--”

“What?” asks Hilary, pausing in their exit, well on her way to annoyed now as Noora slowly stumbles back onto her feet. She’s muttering in a language Hilary doesn’t know but doesn’t like the sound of.

“You can’t take me through the doorway, I’ll die,” Amanda gasps. “And I’ll die badly.”

“How?” Hilary asks, turning to face the fisherwoman whose face is far more placid than the situation warrants, still speaking in words that slither around Hilary’s skin and tug on her bones.

“It’s complicated --”

“How do I _fix it_ , Amanda --”

“Her hands,” Amanda says with more certainty than Hilary feels about anything at the moment. “It’s in her hands.”

Noora looks up at that, snarling, but never faltering in her speech. There’s a particularly stressed syllable in her litany, and a curling of Noora’s fingers, followed by the thinnest, most plaintive scream Hilary’s heard out of a human mouth since she was still green and naive and the world was dying all around her -- Amanda goes rigid on her shoulder, and Hilary, unbalanced, does what she can to make sure Amanda lands on the dining table as she falls. It takes Hilary two steps, unbuckling her leather sheath as she goes, before she’s in range of Noora, who hits her palms out staggering Hilary back with unexpected force. Not far enough to put her arms, now both resting on the table, out of reach of her throwing axe, and so Hilary does just that with an aim that hits its mark excellently.

Noora stumbles back into her chair, her hands left behind on the table, her face as grey as ash.

“What did you do,” she wails, the blood coming now in tremendous fashion. “What did you _do_?”

Hilary prays to the Gods that’s enough, snatches the unconscious Amanda off the table, and runs.

-

It’s possible, Hilary thinks long after the she’s returned Amanda home safe the next morning, that she should’ve asked more questions about the incident with the fishwife at the mill.

-

“Do you really have to go to the lake?” Hilary asks.

They’re somewhere far north, now, although the sky is still its unchanging and uncanny twilight, and the temperature is its unchanging uncomfortable not-quite cold. Hilary can tell because while nothing new has grown in years, the old shadows of moss once pointed direction and their dried husks still stick to the rocks underfoot.

Amanda is so quiet as they ride along, Hilary thinks she might not have heard her. Amanda’s been getting steadily quieter as the days wear on. It’s hours before she says anything and then, it’s:

“Did you really have to become a knight?”

Hilary thinks -- _I’m not a knight_ . She thinks -- _what else is there for women like me?_ She thinks -- _as if there was a choice after growing up around you_. None of the words feel right in her mouth, so out loud, Hilary says nothing at all.

-

There are thousands of different accounts from survivors all over the known world, but this is what happened to Hilary the morning the world broke: absolutely nothing. She woke up, and everything had already happened -- there was nothing to protest, nothing left to protect, nothing to fight against. 

The sun stayed so low in the sky, lamps suddenly had to be burned around the clock. Fall never progressed into winter, there were no more springs, nothing flowered or grew.  
  
She went out into the yard, and half the animals were dead in their stalls. Another half died in days that followed.

People were gone -- nobody spoke about how, or if there’d been some battle, or about who or what had changed the world; some people just weren’t there anymore, one morning to the next.

Hilary was so used to having an enemy to fight, she couldn’t fathom that sometimes evil wasn’t something you could face head-on. She couldn’t fathom that sometimes evil was another name for things people simply couldn’t understand.

The next morning, the fighting began in earnest -- Hilary and the remaining Queensgard expected the Kingsgard and their men, the rumors were that it was their magic that had done this overnight in return for some great boon, but there were women, too. Rogue knights and villagers of every gender banging down the compound doors, scaling the compound walls, everyone was screaming “what did you do,” and no one was asking themselves if it was something they themselves had done.

Half the people disappeared the first day, and half of the remaining died in the fighting the days that followed.

-

“Why do you always scowl when someone calls me pretty?” Hilary’s face twists into a frown, even as her cheeks heat at the question that comes out of the blue.

After she was unceremoniously told there was no further place for her at court -- that there _was_ no more court, which had been stating the frank obvious no matter how much the declaration had seem earth-shattering at the time -- the last thing Hilary expects to find herself doing is protecting the family, the system, that spurned her, for a pretty sum of money or otherwise. Her memory is swift to remind her of how gigantic a pain the ass Princess Amanda -- just Amanda, she supposes, these days -- can be when motivated.

“Do you think I’m not pretty?” Amanda continues on, undeterred by Hilary’s attempts to ignore her.

“It’s not a matter of finding you pretty--”

“So you _do_ think I’m pretty?”

“Gods above and below, did I not just say--”

“So you’re jealous, then,” Amanda smiles, slyly, and Hilary screws her mouth shut.

She knows she’s still blushing, there’s only so much she can do to help that, and since Amanda is situated behind her on their horse, she takes full advantage to school as much scorn as she can into her voice. “If you think I’m jealous of the attentions a drunken huntsman bestowed upon you, who staggered away still proclaiming you to be his pretty darling prize even after you broke a chair over his head, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“ _Oh_.”

Hilary hates how easily Amanda can goad her into responding in a myriad of ways. “Oh _what_?”

“You’re jealous of _them_.”

“I’m not having this conversation with you while you’re draped over the back of my horse.”

“It can wait then,” and Hilary does not like the sound of that at all.

-

Hilary might only be thirteen and still in training, but she knows the basics of how to read people’s bodyspeak -- Julie says she’s actually quite adept at it for someone her age, and as it tends to, all unsolicited praise from Julie makes Hilary preen in a way she’d be embarrassed to be called out on under any other circumstances.

And that there are boys here is news enough -- she knows that it’s to let the princes court the princesses, it’s been explained to her no matter how many times she’s made it well and loudly known that she doesn’t like the idea of it -- but the Kingsgard, the _men_ that come with the boys, there’s something very obviously wrong.

Hilary can see it in the way their hands never stray too far from their pommels, she can see it in the tense shifting, the eyes that dart at the clamorous but innocuous sounds of typical compound life, in the way that they spend more time watching the princesses and the Queensgard that are assigned to them than their own princely charges.

Hilary would be in a bad mood anyway, what with all the ridiculous fanfare and formality a courtsmoot brings, but all it takes is one fumbled attempt at flirtation from a soft-looking idiot with a smile that matches Amanda’s -- Oshie, by the crest lacquered into the cap of his scaled shoulder leathers -- to have Hilary blustering at him:

“Save your clumsy courting for some country bride, you’ll watch your tongue in front of her.”

Hilary’s voice sounds too loud, too imperious to her own ears, and Amanda full on laughing at her right afterwards doesn’t do anything to help, but young Oshie turns as bright red as Hilary feels and flees -- she doesn’t try to stop herself from enjoying the small twist of satisfaction that comes with the boy’s hasty retreat.

Julie is watching the whole exchange, and Hilary knows she’s making the pinched face she’s prone to when she disapproves but simultaneously finds the thing she’s disapproving of amusing. Her face falls, and quickly, though, fast enough for Hilary to turn and track what’s caused it -- and the Kingsgard assigned to Oshie is walking towards Julie with a face as dark as a summer storm.

“Go take Princess Amanda to the bathroom,” Julie says, calmly but quickly. “She’s been dancing like she needs to go for the last hour or so.”

“I don’t need to --”

“You should anyway, now that there’s a break from potential suitors,” Julie insists firmly, and Hilary takes Amanda by the arm.

“You’re hurting me,” Amanda hisses, as Hilary walks her towards the hallway door.

“Then walk faster,” Hilary hisses right back as Amanda huffs and increases her pace as much as her shoes will allow. “I don’t want to find out if I got us in trouble until after Julie’s fixed it.”

“You’ve got to get better at letting boys speak to me,” Amanda sighs.

 _No I don’t_ , Hilary thinks, but doesn’t say.

-

The first time Hilary remembers saving Amanda is when a man took her as ransom for a bid to the Midwestern crown. He was older, and foolish, and not particularly skilled with his battle axe.

He’d never even made it past the far reaches of the compound, taking shelter in an old grain elevator. Hilary had killed that man, Amanda watched her do it.

“Never kill on my behalf again,” she said, once unbound. Hilary remembers her sound serious and sad at the same time, remembers feeling found wanting in a way she hadn’t since her mother had passed, since she’d watched Julie die.

“I killed him for the gold,” Hilary sneered. “I’ve done worse for the gold since life was all parties and courting rituals.” But the request and the look in Amanda’s eye made Hilary pay attention.

It had made Amanda seem like a Queen.

-

There’s a rustling noise that has Hilary up on her haunches, knife in hand even if she’s in just her smallclothes. The flap on her tent lifts to reveal Amanda, unmistakable as she tumbles in hair first. Hilary’s grip on the weapon relaxes.

“I can help, you know,” is what she says, once she settles the flap closed again.

“Help with what?” Hilary asks.

“The dreams,” Amanda says, shrugging. “They’re not exactly natural.”

Hilary almost asks what she means by that, but she can guess. “Who’d be plaguing me with dreams?”

“You remember the mill?” Amanda says quietly. “Noora, me, there are others like us. Each of us a little different, but each of us gifted -- with everything missing from the world. Little microcosms, little spots of life, queens and kings of a dying world.”

Hilary doesn’t know what to say to that. Amanda uses the silence as permission to scoot closer to Hilary’s bed roll.

“I have a plan,” Amanda says. “I was shown a way to give my magic back to the earth -- and in return, things will start to go back to how they were. But, if I do that -- I’ll get weaker, we’ll all get weaker. And some of them don’t want that.”

“They’d rather rule a dying world than see it reborn,” Hilary guesses. She doesn’t ask whether or not Amanda should trust the whispers of an angry, dying planet.

“Yeah,” Amanda says, smiling. “But I don’t care what they want -- there’s right and there’s wrong, and sometimes there are things you just have to do.”

Hilary wants to agree with her. Would’ve without hesitation, once. Now, though --

“Here, scoot,” Amanda interrupts Hilary’s thoughts and shoves at her, dipping her legs into Hilary’s bedding. Her legs are the same permacool ambient temperature as the everything else in the world. It used to be you could tell how long someone had been dead for by touching their skin -- Hilary wonders if those same rules of death apply these days.

“You’re sleeping with me?” Hilary asks, dumbly, and blushes so _damn_ predictably when Amanda’s smile sharpens into a teasing grin. “Not -- I don’t mean --”

“I trust you not to make incursions on my virtue, Queensgard. Count yourself lucky, you’re among the few that have ever had the pleasure of sharing bed with me.”

Hilary blinks through her embarrassment. “The _few_?”

Amanda laughs, shaking with it, even as she wraps her arms around where Hilary’s undershirt rides high along her ribs. “If I touch you, I can keep you free of outside influences -- that jealousy though, not sure if I can do much about that. It’s been pretty persistent throughout the years.”

“If you’re sleeping here,” Hilary mutters. “Stop talking.”

She must fall asleep soon after, because the next thing Hilary knows, she’s waking up, feeling well-rested for the first time in weeks, the weight of Amanda’s legs curled over hers enough to keep in her in place for a few hours longer.

-

Still, Hilary knows in her bones, it’s not going to be as simple as Amanda just giving her magic back to the earth. Nothing in this dying world is ever that simple.

-

“A Queensgard doesn’t marry royalty; a King marries the Queen, just as princes marry princesses -- in this way, we’ve kept the peace for years. Surely you know this by now.”

Hilary is having trouble keeping Julie’s gaze. “Of course I know that.”

“So you say,” Julie continues, reaching out to gently lift Hilary’s chin until she has no choice but to look the woman in the eye. “But you know as well as I do how you’ve been behaving.”

“I don’t want to -- I don’t want to _marry_ Princess Amanda,” Hilary splutters. “But I don’t think she should have to entertain boys who aren’t good enough for her --”

“And who are you to be the judge of that?”

Hilary grimaces. “I’m supposed to protect the princesses, the Queen, from --”

“-- from threats to their well-being,” Julie says, a wry sort of smile twisting across her face. “Which, as last I checked, doesn’t include princes during a courtsmoot. And besides, you’re not supposed to protect Amanda from making difficult decisions. Her whole life will be a series of difficult decisions, the likes of which you and I will never have to face. Part of accepting that you’re willing to give your life in service of the Queen and her court is trusting the women you’re assigned to protect.”

Hilary pulls back from Julie’s grip then, and Julie lets her go. “I don’t trust them, though. The Kingsgard, or their princes.”

“One of the effects of the separation of the courts is a degree of unfamiliarity and latent hostility,” Julie recites, as if from a book or for a lecture. “Something both courts have to overcome during moots for the benefit of the continued Empire.”

Hilary wants to say something else, something about the way all the Kingsgard were twitchy, the way their eyes were too bright and their responses too abrupt, but maybe it’s all part of the same problem, the way she might be holding on to Amanda’s honor just a little too tightly, the way it seems so easy to think so poorly of every boy -- maybe it’s her. Julie continues to regard her with her full attention, which under the best of circumstances can make Hilary a little anxious, and whatever she sees causes something to soften, to unbend.

“But with that said,” Julie continues. “I don’t trust them either. Especially not the men whose Kingdom they’ve come to represent.”

And with that, Julie ruffles her hair, which simultaneously annoys Hilary and makes her feel forgiven.

-

It’s easy to blame the Breaking on a single man, but in truth, it was never that simple. It’s the same old story, though, someone wanting too much power at too low a price -- but instead of sighing and relenting and waiting years for the balancing, the world shuddered and steeled itself and said “no.”

-

The truth comes to Hilary in a vision -- she’s struck down as they clear a village Amanda gave a flowering apple orchard back to. She can’t see, and then she can’t hear, and then she’s so incredibly cold.

The truth comes, and it’s awful -- full of Hilary sliding along an icy pond, holding a struggling Amanda’s head under near-black water, until she slowly stops moving, and then slowly sinks down, down, to the bottom of the lake. She can see seaweed spring from her soft pale body, newly fertilized fish growing to size and nibbling at Amanda’s rotting toes. She can see ahead years, decades, centuries, see all the life that would come from it, all taking roost in Amanda’s water-logged bones.

 _Is it worth it_ ? The vision asks in a voice that sounds like a wailing cacophony of every familiar voice Hilary has a memory of. It’s enough to make Hilary scream. _Is it worth living with it after_?

Amanda is shaking Hilary, dirt and blood tainting Hilary’s mouth even as she coughs and blinks awake on the ground in a field of browning grass.

Hilary doesn’t talk about it, but Hilary can see that Amanda knows, just like Hilary can see in the way Amanda winces, in the way Amanda doesn’t ask, that what she saw is close enough to the truth.

-

“I won’t do it,” Hilary says, as they travel down a steep enough mountain to have to lead their horses by foot. “Just so you know now. I won’t do it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Amanda says, not looking anywhere but the ground.

 _You're a terrible liar_ , Hilary thinks.

-

Amanda is more free with her magic now, now that she knows where she’s going. Hilary still isn’t sure how she does it, how her magic works, exactly, just that she changes the nature of things -- a barren tree becomes a flowering tree, a barrel of salt water, a barrel of wine, a broken leg, knit up and mended. Hilary wonders if it hurts -- Hilary wonders what Amanda has to give in exchange.

All Amanda ever does is smile afterwards, rosy cheeked, like she’s just come in from running through a field. Hilary can never hold her gaze.

-

There comes a morning when a valley of evergreens on grey-brown dirt turns into snow-speckled mountaintops. Hilary tells herself that she's beyond the dread weighing down her body, that she's better than the fear that multiplies threefold when a few hours later, the hills give way to a clearing that houses a sheet of ice as unmistakable as a sunrise would be after years of graying predawn.  
  
By some unspoken accord, both Hilary and Amanda slow their horses down to a standstill.  
  
It's Amanda that suggests: "Let's stop here for the night."

Hilary is so grateful she only manages to nod.

She's setting up camp, and from some unseen and well-placed hiding spot, a folded letter falls from Hilary's belongings -- it's bright red wax seal a stain on an otherwise bleak array. She picks up Megan's letter and considers it. She knows Amanda's plan now, there's no real reason for her to read the letter, and yet. There's a curiosity, for lack of a better explanation, a burning desire for closure and perspective, and there's a part of Hilary that wonders if all that she's missing is written on these pages, sealed up and waiting to be read.

Hilary's thumb catches on the edge of the wax dot, along with her breath. "What the hell," she mutters out loud, and without another thought, cracks it open and begins to read the words inside.

-

A young eight-year-old Hilary is crying. She’s crying because Julie isn’t there to scold her for it, to tell her that it’s unbecoming to be so upset over the natural cycles of life and death in the world.

She’s in the God’s Field, under the large oak, and she’s crying because all that’s left of her mother is a dirt mound whether they buried her like all the Queensgard at the foot of the large oak in the God’s Field. The young golden-haired princess finds her there, tries to be quiet, but Hilary isn’t one of the best guards-in-training for nothing -- Hilary had heard her approach from fifty paces out.

“Leave me alone,” she hisses, too embarrassed to fumble for manners she’s been told repeatedly she sorely lacks, scrubbing at her already-snotty face.

“You’re sad.” The princess -- Amanda, she thinks. Princess Amanda, says

“ _Obviously_ \--”

“Why?”

“Why? Wha -- _why_ ?” Hilary throws a handful of her mother’s grave dirt in the princess’ face. It’s admittedly not her finest moment. “She’s dead, you dense ass. She’s _gone_ and she’ll be _gone_ for the rest of my life, and-- and-- and she left me here. Alone.”

For a moment, the rush of anger she feels is completely subsumed into an absolutely crushing sadness, so complete, there's nothing Hilary wants more than to dig up the dirt and crawl into the grave with her mother.  
  
“She’s not gone,” Amanda smiles, brushing off the dirt clinging to her hair. “She’s in the ground, now, feeding the plants, the worms, the trees. Feeding our food, feeding us.”

A part of Hilary wants to find that morbid, wants to yell and scream at the other girl for being disgusting, heartless, for not understanding. But her words wither and die on her tongue as she watches the fair-haired girl plop down next to her in the dirt and soil, fine dress and all. “No one’s ever _gone_ , all anyone ever does is change.”

-

 _Faith, it's faith that comes before hope_.

-

Amanda crawls in to Hilary's bed roll shortly after Hilary lights the camp lamp, each one of her limbs wrapping around the larger woman's frame. Hilary burrows into Amanda's forest of hair and inhales, hiding a smile. She waits, listens for Amanda's breathing to even out, and fights the temptation to sleep.

"I have a plan," Hilary says to Amanda's sleeping form. "But you're not going to like it."

Slowly, as slowly as she would go trying to extricate herself from a sprung bear-trap or hidden trigger wire, Hilary detangles herself without waking Amanda up from her sleep. She exits the tent quietly, and then takes what she needs before heading down the slope to the lake below.

-

Hilary expects the air this close to the ice to be colder, but it's not. The shock of the true frozen burn on her bare feet, the way the ice snatches at the moisture of her skin and tries to keep it glued to its surface, almost comes a surprise. Hilary grits her teeth, makes her way out far enough to the center of the lake before she sets to work cutting out a human-sized hole in the surface of the ice. Once it's done, she spares a moment to think of everything she needs to -- Amanda's smile, the fresh bright green that you can practically taste when deciduous trees crackle back to life, the specific smell of rock warmed in the high-noon sun -- everything warm and full of life that she can wrap around herself like a shield, and then Hilary jumps feet first into the water, not thinking of much at all.

 _You made a mistake,_ the thought squeezes around Hilary's head like a vice.  _You left what we want up above_.

 _No_ , Hilary grinds out around the pressure in her head.  _I have something to offer, something of my own, something worth taking._

The water's skepticism runs like knife points over her skin -- the water so much more than just cold, so much more than black and fathomless and complete. Hilary can't remember ever feeling so small.

 _Show me_ , comes the command, and so Hilary tries -- she drags up every available memory, every fleeting sense, every crinkled smile, every inarticulate half-feeling she's had good or bad, tries to flood her brain with all the Amanda she has inside her.

And it could just be a trick of the circumstances, but Hilary swears she feels the water around her get warmer. She opens her eyes, and there are tendrils of pale green, like sunbeams filtering down to the bottom of a murky lake. Hilary chases them with her fingers, but they feel no different -- swims up towards them because how can she not, and again, feels everything get warmer and brighter with each strong kick of her legs. Something unfurls in her chest, something a lot like what comes before hope.

-

It’s easy to credit the Unbreaking to a single woman, but in truth, it was never that simple. It’s the same old story, though, someone wanting full forgiveness with not enough sacrifice -- but instead of scorning and scoffing and waiting years for the balancing, the world hummed and found its sense of humor and said “maybe.” 

-

Hilary's not sure who says this to her, but it's the words that stick in her mind, not the speaker.

She's being given her first short sword, and it has the crest of the Queensgard branded into the metal close to the hilt.

"Keeping the faith," the voice says. "That's our motto. Something we share with the Church."

She secretly likes to think it was her mom, but anyone who might've known that for sure is long gone.

"Faith in God?" Hilary remembers asking.

"Well maybe," the voice had laughed. "But more importantly, believing that no matter how some things change, there are parts of us that should always stay the same."

-

Hilary gasps, and wakes up with a face-full of Amanda's shock of hair, wrapped up in Amanda's limbs. She takes a few breaths, letting the smell of Amanda's sweat and salt calm her, and hides a smile in her forest of her. She abruptly feels a sense of deja vu, but pushes it aside. She's been having a lot of those moments lately.

She waits, listens for Amanda's breathing to even out, and fights the temptation to sleep.

"I have a plan," Hilary says to Amanda's sleeping form. "But you're not going to like it."

-

 _I'm in love with you_ , Hilary doesn't let herself think, especially not after she knows how this is going to end.

-

Slowly, as slowly as she would go trying to extricate herself from a sprung bear-trap or hidden trigger wire, Hilary attempts to detangle herself from the mess of Amanda's limbs, but gets caught as Amanda reaches out, lets her fingers intertwine with Hilary's.

"Whatever it is, let's talk about it down at the water."

"Now, you want to go now?"

Amanda shrugs, and rolls over a little. "We've waited long enough."

There's already a hole in the ice when they finally make the climb down. Amanda looks at Hilary, and Hilary frowns.

"I might have done this before," Hilary says, hesitating. "It's kind of hard to remember."

"You said you had a plan," Amanda says in lieu of acknowledging the specifics of what Hilary's just said.

Hilary grins brightly, and looks up at Amanda, trying to steal a bit of her mischief, a bit of her boldness. "Have you ever heard the story of the Gift of the Magi?"

-

"Are you sure this is going to work?" Amanda asks, breathless and shivering.

-

_“How do I _fix it_ , Amanda --”_

_-_

"No," Hilary replies, as honestly as she can. "Trust me anyway."

-

_“I find your lack of faith disturbing."_

_-_

They enter the water together, wrapped up so much in each other it's hard to tell where one woman ends and the other one begins. Hilary doesn't know what Amanda's thinking, but she regrets every moment she wasn't completely up front with how important Amanda is to her. She wonders if more honesty would've helped along the way. She wonders if Amanda even knows how much she feels how her whole heart thrums

 _together, wrapped up so much in each other_ every time they're together.

it's hard to tell where one woman ends and the other one begins

Hilary wonders and wonders and wonders _and wonders and wonders_

until Amanda leans over and says as clear as day, as if they were standing next to each other in a dark empty room, not twenty, thirty, forty feet under water, "stop thinking so loudly, of course I know, and me too."

-

As the last air bubbles float to the window of water before the surfaces goes entirely, irrevocably still, a sigh runs through the trees by the lake. The sigh continues on, running through the valley, through the grasslands, down the rivers and streams. When the sigh passes, two things happen -- the ice of the lake cracks open, and the sun, for the first time in fifteen years, finally sets. 

 


	2. o death, where is thy sting? o grave, where is thy victory?

It's a summers day, and Hilary blinks -- opens her eyes to a blue sky dotted with thin, streamlined clouds, water lapping at her back and tangling with her hair. It takes her several moments to realize she's not sure where she is, the whole place seems so familiar.

It had been Amanda's idea to come down to the lake, she thinks she and Phil used to skate on the ice out here when they were kids.

It's a nice thought, living close enough to your own personal ice rink.

"Hey," Amanda calls. "If you're going to doze off, you should probably at least do it in an intertube."

"I wasn't sleeping," Hilary says. The air across her exposed skin raises gooseflesh. She's suddenly unseasonably cold. "But I think I might be sunburned? It's cold as fuck out here."

"It's not cold at all," Amanda says, sounding doubtful. "You feeling OK? We haven't been out here long enough for you to be sunburned."

Hilary paddles herself upright, breast-stroking her way to where Amanda's long-sitting, toes in the sand, at the shore. She's wearing an old school one-piece suit, it's not one Hilary remembers seeing before. On the way over to Amanda, Hilary spots a camp-site up along the hill of the lake, an old gas lamp unlit dug into the ground next to it. It's odd -- for some reason Hilary thought this was private land.

"Doesn't this lake and land belong to your family?" She asks Amanda, trudging out of the water and throwing herself down next to Amanda on her towel.

"Yeah, of course," Amanda says, rolling her eyes. "We only come here every year, you know that."

"Yeah but," Hilary continues, and waves in the direction of the camp. "When'd that old shit get up there?"

Amanda cranes her head to look, and after a while proclaims: "huh. Weird. I'll have to ask mom about it when we drive back."

Hilary basks in the easy sensation of the sun warming her wet skin. "Hey, when did we get here anyway?"

"I dunno," Amanda answers, curling up on her side of the blanket. She turns to face Hilary, and the two of them are now so close their noses are practically touching. "Not too long ago. Why, you already want to head back?"

"No," Hilary says, suddenly very sure of that fact. "No, this is nice. I'm happy we're here, I wanna spend time with you, ya know?"

"Me too, ya jerk," Amanda grins. "But it's important that you are actually happy. If that changes, we can shake things up too. Just because we come out here every year doesn't mean we have to this year. Plenty of stuff to do at the house, too."

"I know, it's just tradition is important," Hilary shrugs.

"So is moving on to better things," Amanda counters. "And if that means no lake because you ain't feeling it, then that means no lake."

Amanda pokes Hilary in the nose, before reaching down to wrap one of her hands around Hilary's wrist. "You spend a lot of time worrying about whether or not I'm happy, it can be a lot to bear. You gotta trust that if I'm around someone as much as I'm around you, it's  _because_  you make me happy, not that I'm doing it despite that."

"I do," Hilary says quietly into the space between them. "I do know that."

"Then are you ready to leave?" Amanda sighs, tilting up her sunglasses. "As far as fantasy vacations go, this one's hardly perfect anyways."

Hilary reaches around until she's able to slip her hands into Amanda's. The skin of her palm and fingers feels warm and real, a little scratchy from where the sand has stuck to patches of skin covered in sunscreen.

"Yeah," Hilary smiles. "I think I'm ready to leave."

**Author's Note:**

> There's some systematized gender discrimination that's going on and inherent to the world's social structure -- it's problematic, even if the characters don't treat it as such. Fairly graphic violence is described in pretty PG-13 terms, specifically a bilateral hand amputation. Major character pseudo-death? I mean, their present planar existence is probably questionable, but since this exists in the vague trappings of mythology, their being "dead" isn't really a permanent or consistent thing. Since they do however volunteer for their death, depending on your personal triggers for suicide, there are related themes present in this work of fiction.
> 
> As always, if I've forgotten to disclaim something you'd like covered, feel free to drop me a line -- I'll add my email after the author reveal if you'd rather not do it via comment in public.


End file.
